My Brain Curse

Halloween is almost here and the outdoor air feels like fall. The trees haven’t really started to turn yet, but undoubtedly will in the next few days or so. The time that I have spent blogging lately is miniscule – I believe that writing for a living is possibly hindering my writing for fun.

I’m not saying writing is not fun. Writing is the essence of life – all of the greatest works and themes of life are all in writing; historically beginning with the Bible and Ten Commandments and recently arriving at the screenplay for an embarrassment of the movie, "Saw V". The timeless fundamental lesson of all Kindergarten school children is reading and writing. Writing is the foundation of all of our lives, whether we believe it or not.

My business writing style is quite heavy – very technical and loaded with factually researched information. In fact, I believe that I could fall through the floor, straight into hell, if I were ever to initiate a business proposal by plopping at my desk and haphazardly beginning to write. I usually start with researching, putting facts together, learning from other people, researching some more, making an outline, sorting the facts… much like putting together a college research paper. The grunt work is never done for you, which takes the joy out of putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. The writing never starts with the writing.

Speaking of putting finger to keys, I haven’t been the usual magnificent typist lately, mostly because the analytical portion of my brain and the typing portion of my brain have been arguing feverishly. Don’t get me wrong, I feel that my typing skills are far superior to my handwriting skills, which doesn’t say much. In fact, I once took the online typing test and scored 72 words per minute. That’s pretty impressive, considering I only took one formal typing class in my whole life… in high school.The point is that my analytical brain is contemplating on what I’m typing, and when that doesn’t make sense, my fingers simply don’t know what to do. “Should we type something that doesn’t make sense?” fingers must be thinking to themselves, “Should we keep analyzing until we get it right? Should we just look dumb because all of the neurons on one side of the brain are all firing at once?”

My brain prefers the latter.

My curiosity about my sudden keyboard dyslexia and inability to type drove me straight to the know-all, be-all of world-wide-web information: google.com.I found several different sites that led me to several non-descriptive answers:

Reasons why typing may be difficult:

-long fingernails
-English as a second (or third) language
-learning to type on a typewriter
-poor formal training
-distractions or too much information flowing into and out of the brain

My encounter with several different websites directed me to a similar concept of talking and writing. Sometimes when you carry on a conversation while writing, you tend to write the few short words that are included in your conversation. The parts of your brain that fire during conversation are the same parts that activate during writing and analyzing. The commonality of both parts of the brain develops into devastating communication conflict with regards to simultaneously speaking, analyzing, typing or writing. Hmmm...

Go to www.typing.com to test your typing skills.